The Life of NADIA

 

Jeri Jacquin

Currently on DVD and Digital from writer/director Anissa Bonnefont along with Edith Chapin and Indiepix Films comes the extraordinary story of NADIA.

It begins with the memories of Nadia Nadim and the death of her father when the family lived in Afghanistan. Her mother, Hamida, found a way to take 8-year-old Nadia and siblings away from their home country. As the years passed, Nadia became a professional football (soccer) player and a need arose in her to revisit her homeland.

Speaking with her mother, the fears of the Taliban are still real but there is a slim chance that Nadia can recover something of her fathers, his military medals. Her idea is a difficult one as most of those she could talk to have passed in the twenty years since leaving Afghanistan. Remembering the night they escaped; their first stop was Pakistan and spending time in Karachi with nothing but the bare essentials.

They found there way to Italy and then settled in Denmark. The family tells Nadia that her father had 48 medals that were hidden for fear that the Taliban would find them leading to the death of who ever held onto them. The details that a few family members could share gives a sketchy idea of where they could possibly be if, in fact, they were still there but Nadia must also focus on her athletic career. An ambassador to the Danish Refugee Council, Football Foundation and UNESCO, Nadim wants to be part of the changing world.

Nadim’s mother worries about the trip to Afghanistan but the player is focused on football, her charitable works and fan who love her as the season begins to wind down. Even with all of that, Nadim thinks about her father and how, as a child, she dealt with the grief. Hamida worries about her security and that’s when a plan is created as to what she would need to make the homeward trip. She realizes also that she will have to purchase the traditional garb to fit in.

All the while Nadim is focusing on the upcoming final games. What is after football is a medical career. She meets with the French Ambassador who lets her know of the dangers happening in Afghanistan. They fear that knowing who she is in that country makes her a bigger target. More and more people who love her come forward telling Nadim that it is not a good time to return to Afghanistan.

She meets with sister Muskan and Nadim believe that she and all of her sisters get their strength from the parents of course, but feel something more for their father. Having five daughters, Nadim’s father raised them to be tough girls. So, Nadim feels going to Afghanistan is a way of saying a proper goodbye to a father she misses so much.

Nadim remembers when football became her obsession. That obsession leads her team to win the Paris Saint-Germain French Championship in 2021. Still waiting to go to Afghanistan, Nadim cannot believe how her life at 33 years old has been a mixture of so much emotion, change, challenge, memories, family, countries, friendship and a story that needed to be told.

IndiePix Films, Inc is an independent film distribution and online streaming service based in New York City. IndiePix Unlimited, the company's subscription-streaming service, uses Streamhoster to deliver the desktop version for the service, and Ireland-based DMD Max for its mobile content. For more information, please visit https://indiepixfilms.com.

From Tribeca Film Festival, Award-Winner Anissa Bonnefort, this film was nominated for an International Emmy for Best Sports Documentary. The film was also nominated for an International Emmy Award and in the Highlights section of CPH: DOX and winner of the Jury Ward for the 11mm Football Film Festival in Berlin.

NADIA is an uplifting story that comes from a woman who had seen and experienced the terror of the Taliban on her family. That also brings a harrowing journey hiding and being shuffled from one place to another and ending up somewhere they could never have imagined. Yet, the young Nadia was able to find her place in the word by simply seeing kids playing football one day. That turned into international recognition that enabled her to see the world but still, she never forgot where she came from and what that meant.

Listening to Nadia tell the story, it is as if it was yesterday as she provides such intricate detail. I found myself intrigued by everything she had to say. I journeyed to find my father and although the situations are not the same, the emotion of wanting to have a piece of a father explains her desire to find medals that, perhaps, no longer existed yet she wants to try. I understand that completely.

This is definitely a sports film but more than that, it is the heart of an athlete that loves where she is but must make peace with the past.

In the end – she began as a refugee but became an international star!